'Scotland has much to be proud of in the way that the pandemic has been managed. I have no doubt that the death toll would have been greater without the unwavering support and close working relationship between the government and the clinical community.' Dr Dr Stephen Cole, President of the Scottish Intensive Care Society Contributor reminders and comments talkingupreminders@gmail.com

“The contact tracing system crucial to hopes of easing lockdown will be outsourced to private call centre operators including Serco, The Times has learnt.

The bulk of contact tracing work will be contracted out to at least two companies who are being asked to provide about 15,000 call centre staff.

They will be given about a day of training in the principles of and a script to handle conversations with people who have been at close quarters with confirmed cases.”

The rest of the article requires subscription.

Then this from the Morning Star, taking its lead from The Times and expanding on it.

Last year, Serco was fined nearly £23 million as part of a settlement with the Serious Fraud Office over an electronic tagging contract with the Ministry of Justice. Both Serco and G4S were accused of charging the government for electronically monitoring people who were either dead, in jail or had left the country.

Serco has also been embroiled in a number of other scandals, including falsifying NHS records to meet targets at a Cornwall out-of-hours GP surgery.

Campaign group We Own It director Cat Hobbs said that it was “beyond belief” that the firms were in line for the contracts.

“Whether it is falsifying NHS data or staffing breast-cancer screening hotlines with staff who’ve only had an hour’s training, Serco’s track record shows that it is utterly unfit to play any role in our NHS.”

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth also criticised the plans, arguing that the public will not want to see the system “in the hands of private companies seeking to make a profit.”

Slugger O’Toole has a piece about the respective effectiveness of the UK tracing app and the Irish tracing app. You may have guessed already that the Irish tracing app is much more effective and that NI should use the Irish app rather than the UK one.

“Therefore, phones using the UK government app will generally only be able to transmit to other phones if they are unlocked and the app is being used, whilst apps using the decentralised approach such as the Irish government app will be able to register contacts with other users even if both phones are locked or the app is in the background….

….The proposed UK system will rely heavily on many people installing the app on Android phones that are more than three years old. If the UK decided to adopt the decentralised approach, it would be able to avail of the Exposure Notification API, and these issues would not exist. The percentage of people running older versions of Android will naturally fall over time as people upgrade their phones.

Whilst Google and Apple generally only allow one contact tracing app per country, flexibility is being shown where one country can have different systems, for example different states in the United States. If the UK government cannot be dissuaded from pursuing their current approach, then Northern Ireland should follow the much more effective strategy of using a decentralised approach and align with the Republic.”

4 thoughts on “Contact tracing system crucial to hopes of easing lock-down to be outsourced”

Typical response from Westminster
To aid and abet their own shareholdings
And those of their cronies by throwing a few diamonds into the Serco bucket full of broken glass
And in a manner that their is no need for them to cut and bleed their greedy paws
In retrieving their prize
Just sit back and do nothing other than create another fine mess
Laurel and Hardie could not outdo them
In the fine mess department
Tally Ho old chaps and all the way to the bank
To paraphrase B.Clinton
It is the Wealth NOT the Health STUPID

Another excellent piece from Slugger picking up the political problems the Irish face over lockdown.

“Average daily incidence [of covid-19] in the RoI is now 18% of its peak covid value. By contrast – even though its peak covid day was three days earlier – the UK is at 87% of its peak covid figure. NI is in between, at 55%.

These three differing stories may well bring significant strain on Northern politics. If daily incidence in the South continues to drop at the same rate, it is likely that it will be ready for a significant unwinding of its lockdown before the North. This scenario creates a dilemma for Dublin, but also for Sinn Féin: do they agree to keep the border open and risk a possible upsurge in COVID-19 cases in RoI? How will that play out among SF’s new voters, many of whom have minimal interest in the North? Or will nationalist ideology win out over jurisdictional public health prudence?

The DUP and UUP could also be in a very tight spot. If Northern Ireland’s COVID-19 incidence continues to drop at a much faster rate compared to the overall UK rate, it will be ready to unwind earlier than the mainland. In that scenario, for Northern Ireland to protect the gains it will have made, it will have to impose travel restrictions at airports and North Channel ports. Could unionist ministers agree to quarantining visitors from the mainland to avoid a possible upsurge in COVID-19 cases in NI? If they don’t, how will that play out amongst unionists? Will there be another tranche of unionist voters marching over to Alliance? Will unionist ideology win out over jurisdictional public health prudence?”

'Scotland has much to be proud of in the way that the pandemic has been managed. I have no doubt that the death toll would have been greater without the unwavering support and close working relationship between the government and the clinical community.' Dr Dr Stephen Cole, President of the Scottish Intensive Care Society Contributor reminders and comments talkingupreminders@gmail.com

'Scotland has much to be proud of in the way that the pandemic has been managed. I have no doubt that the death toll would have been greater without the unwavering support and close working relationship between the government and the clinical community.' Dr Dr Stephen Cole, President of the Scottish Intensive Care Society Contributor reminders and comments talkingupreminders@gmail.com

'Scotland has much to be proud of in the way that the pandemic has been managed. I have no doubt that the death toll would have been greater without the unwavering support and close working relationship between the government and the clinical community.' Dr Dr Stephen Cole, President of the Scottish Intensive Care Society Contributor reminders and comments talkingupreminders@gmail.com

'Scotland has much to be proud of in the way that the pandemic has been managed. I have no doubt that the death toll would have been greater without the unwavering support and close working relationship between the government and the clinical community.' Dr Dr Stephen Cole, President of the Scottish Intensive Care Society Contributor reminders and comments talkingupreminders@gmail.com